1/ I'm wondering if we can start a conversation about anonymity in academia its virtues + problems. I was really confused by this recent exchange with @RamblingC18 -- a new online platform for C18 presentist writing.
2/ They recently published a piece by "Anonymous" that takes shots at the @V21collective and its manifesto. the-rambling.com/2018/10/18/i-a…
3/ The exchange above confused me. It's not clear that the editorial note was written by the author, which allows Anonymous to speak for The @RamblingC18 itself. Which, reflexively, makes it seem The Rambling endorses the piece both as satire and as "an important perspective."
4/ I take it the editors see the piece as the kind of "critical satire" that Lillian Liu writes about it elsewhere in the issue, an "affecting and effective tool of resistance." But resistance against what? And what is being satirized?
5/ I've been critical of The Manifesto since the jump. Blogged about it, wrote for b2o, all under my name. bit.ly/2q1p0dPAnd I've always thought the semi-collective but anonymous authorship of it was a mistake. But at least there were affiliates (now including me).
6/ I'm not sure how anonymous carping helps us do what we do better. It *does* shield people, but here it's hard to tell what it's shielding them from, or to what end. At the least, I don't think anonymity should be granted simply at request.
7/ Which makes me think about when anonymity helps: peer review, some conference submissions, tenure review. In each case, clarity and honesty is crucial. But these anonymous writings are (importantly) not published.
8/ Anonymous publication is problematic because it de-situates; it makes it hard to read what the critique means, what it's arguing for. It's another version of what Haraway once called "the god trick of seeing everything from nowhere."
9/ I raise all of this because, as we're working to expand our investment in the public dimensions of scholarship and in new modalities for writing, as we work to connect the ways we write and act, we need to talk about the implications of this vs. that approach.
